insurance homeowner
Flood Insurance- Homeowners Insurance Does Not Cover Flood Damage
Your alarm clocks buzzes and you wearily climb from the comfort of your warm bed. Time to start another day. You set to work making your coffee and make your way to the bathroom to take a shower while you coffee maker perks. You turn the water on and begin getting your stuff ready while you wait for the hot water to start in.
You keep waiting, but it remains ice cold… You turn off the water and head downstairs to press the button on your water heater so the water will heat up. As you descend the steps to your basement, you notice your basement is knee deep full of water. This is a dreaded situation. Your water heater has erupted and broke.
This is a horrible sight as you use your basement as a family-style room. You notice DVD’s, video games, school books, and your laptop floating around the basement steps. Your newly laid carpet is ruined!
Your television is water-logged and you know that the DVD player and video game system are ruined as well. You realize that if you had not had homeowners insurance you would have really been in trouble. As you continue on to work, you remember that your wife had suggested you raise the deductible on your homeowners policy so that you had to pay a lower premium. You had put this off and hadn’t made the call so you are happy about that!
Once you get to work you will have to call the insurance company to file a claim about the broken water heater. When you make the call, the insurance company informs you that you are not covered. What? How can this be? You assumed you were covered against flood, but had never specifically asked about it and hadn’t read your policy through to find out. The basic fact is that homeowners insurance will not cover flood at all. This requires a special type of insurance.
Having flood insurance is an important thing as floods, as you can see, can happen anytime for a number of reasons. Many people don’t think it necessary to pay for flood insurance since they do not reside near the water. This is not the only flooding that can occur. As you just found out, a water heater can bust, as can a hose on your washing machine of dish washer, or a sewage line can back up and cause a nasty flood. The cost associated with flood insurance will vary greatly on where you live. If you happen to reside in a low lying area that is prone to flooding, your premium will be higher.
No matter how you go about getting your flood insurance, it is a very important coverage to have and you must make sure you have the appropriate amount of coverage. This can help you to prepare for the unknown and can save you a lot of worry, hassle and money down the road.
What personal properties is covered with homeowner insurance?
I want take picture of the items in my car and home for insurance policy. What is or isn’t acceptable?
The best thing to do is first talk with your agent and determine any policy limitations or exclusions. Some company’s cap certain lossess for certain items (e.g. a non-scheduled jewelry theft might be capped at $2,500).
A good rule of thumb is this: Ask yourself if you have anything worth having appraised. If you think you have something worth having appraised then you’re probably going to want to have that item specifically scheduled on your homeowners policy.
It may add to the premium so you’ll need to get only A: what you can afford and B: what your comfortable with coverage-wise. You may want to play around with changing deductibles etc in order to lessen the any premium increase.
As far as items in your car; be carefull with this one. Lets say your car caught fire and burned up taking a bunch of clothes, furniture and tvs with it that were inside the car at the time. Your belongings that were in the car would be covered under your homeowners policy and not under the auto (which would only cover that car itself and possibly some custom stuff depending on your policy). Just don’t think that because it’s in the car the auto insurance will cover it.
I would recomend taking any receipts for expensive items and keeping them in a folder outside the house (or have your agent put them in your file), walk around make a general inventory of your belongings, and take either pictures or videos of the inside of your home.
Bill seeks to reform Natural Disaster Insurance Market of the homeowner's Defense Act is to wean disasters States Federal Government support for off natural and open up the insurance market for the residents in areas prone to natural disasters.
